• English - Crime

    Biryani, Burkha, and Betrayal

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Sangeeta Chatterjee The aroma hit her first. Smoky, layered with saffron and ghee, laced with secrets. Inspector Ayesha Roy paused at the corner of Park Circus Lane No. 7, letting the scent guide her like a bloodhound. It wasn’t the first time food had been her clue. At thirty-four, she was the most unorthodox officer at the Taltala Police Station. She wore her kurtas crisp, her mind sharper, and her tongue sharpest of all. Her colleagues called her “The Knife with Kohl Eyes.” She didn’t mind. Some truths needed carving out. This morning, she wasn’t following a criminal. She was…

  • English - Fiction

    Shadows of the State

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Ravi Srinivasan Part 1: The Letter and the Leak It started not with a murder, but with an envelope—sealed, unmarked, and slipped under the newsroom door of The Dakshara Daily on a monsoon-drenched morning. The building still smelled faintly of damp paper and printer ink when Ananya Raghavan picked it up. She was the first one in, as always, her raincoat dripping near her desk, the hiss of boiling water already building in the pantry behind her. She slit the envelope open with a metal ruler, her journalist’s instinct prickling even before the contents were revealed. Inside: a single typed…

  • English - Horror

    Ghosts of Gariahat

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Anindita Pal Chapter 1: The Momo Plan It was one of those sticky summer nights in Kolkata when the ceiling fans felt more like an insult than comfort. Power had just returned after a one-hour load shedding, and the five of them—Rik, Mou, Shaon, Neel, and Isha—were sprawled on the floor of Shaon’s living room, pretending to care about a movie none of them had chosen. “Let’s go get momos,” said Mou, sitting up with the sudden clarity of someone struck by divine hunger. “Real ones. Spicy ones. From that stall near the Bata showroom.” Neel raised an eyebrow. “At…

  • English - Crime

    Blood on the Canvas

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Amit Mehra Chapter 1 — The Vanishing Masterpiece The Galerie du Ciel, nestled along a quieter bend of the Seine where the gaslights flickered like trembling brushstrokes upon the dark water, glowed with opulence on that fateful night. From sleek black sedans to vintage carriages, Paris’s elite arrived in waves, their jewels glinting like captured stars beneath the crystalline chandeliers that adorned the gallery’s vaulted ceiling. Inside, the air was heavy with the mingling scents of aged mahogany, jasmine perfume, and the faint, metallic tang of antique frames polished to perfection. At the very heart of the grand hall, beneath…

  • English - Romance

    A Lotus in Winter

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Rishsav Sharma Chapter 1 The first snowfall had already blanketed the narrow trails leading up to the mountain ashram by the time Dr. Shreyashi Mehra arrived. Her boots crunched softly against the icy path, each step a delicate negotiation between pain and purpose. The cold wind rushed past her ears, but she barely noticed; she had long grown used to the numbness, both physical and emotional. Perched at 7,000 feet in the remote folds of the lower Himalayas, the ashram was a cluster of stone and timber structures nestled beneath ancient pine trees, smoke spiraling faintly from chimneys as if…

  • English - Comedy

    Mic Drop Madness

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Ravi Venkatesh Part 1: The Open Mic War Begins In the buzzing alleys of Bangalore, where biryani is a second religion and tech startups bloom faster than rain-soaked mushrooms, something curious had taken root—stand-up poetry. Not quite comedy, not quite theatre, and certainly not for the faint of vocabulary. By 2025, it had morphed into a strange new beast. Think Netflix drama meets spoken word, with a dash of ego and cappuccino foam. Two open mic venues had risen to cult status—Café Metaphor in Indiranagar, and Rhyme & Roast in Koramangala. Each claimed poetic supremacy. Their Instagram reels were savage.…

  • English - Suspense

    The House on Mango Lane

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Chapter One: The Return The monsoon clouds trailed her like a shadow across the sky as Naina D’Costa stepped off the plane at Dabolim Airport, the humidity of Goa clinging to her skin like memory. She hadn’t been back in ten years, not since the funeral of her grandfather, and certainly not since the family’s carefully unspoken fallout with her grandmother, Amelia D’Costa. Now, Amelia was gone, and Naina had returned not for sentiment but for closure—to sign papers, to meet the property agent, to photograph the house one last time before it was sold. The cab wound its way…

  • English - Young Adult

    The Last Rickshaw Ride

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Kamal Prasad Mishra Chapter 1: The Ride Begins The night air in Chandni Chowk clung to Amal like a memory he couldn’t shake. August’s monsoon rains had dried, leaving behind a warmth soaked in the scent of old spices, frying oil, and time. It was past midnight, yet the city didn’t sleep — it simply sighed in quieter breaths. The streets were damp with leftover life: a chaiwala still pouring from his kettle like it was a sacred act, a woman arranging wilted marigolds on a cart, and a cow that blinked slowly as if it knew secrets older than…

  • English - Suspense

    Monsoon Strokes

    June 23, 2025 - By 

    Ayesha Fernandes Part 1: The First Drop The rain came slow, like a lover hesitating at the doorstep. It began with a whisper against the rusted railing of the old apartment on Chapel Road, then picked up its rhythm like tabla fingers on taut skin. Amara stood by the half-open window, brush frozen mid-air, eyes half-lidded in thought. The canvas before her bore the beginning of a woman’s face, unfinished—like everything else in her life these days. She wasn’t supposed to paint today. She had promised herself a break. But the monsoon had this way of stirring her skin, cracking…

  • English - Romance

    Equation

    June 22, 2025 - By 

    Mansi Raihan Part 1: Pitch or Personal? “So, what makes you think this will work?” Anna Sanyal’s voice was crisp, like glass about to crack. She leaned forward slightly, her blazer immaculate, fingers tapping a silver pen on the mahogany table. Ridhim Guhathakurta cleared his throat. “We’ve run a closed beta in Salt Lake with 500 users. Forty percent retention in 7 days, sixty percent reorder rate.” “That’s data,” Anna said flatly. “I’m asking belief.” “I believe,” he said, eyes steady. “Because I know what it’s like to wait forty minutes for overpriced biryani from an app that doesn’t care.…